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Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned a British diplomat in Tehran following the arrest of several Iranian nationals in the United Kingdom on espionage charges, state media reported on Monday.
"Following the unjustified arrest of a number of Iranian nationals in the UK... the British charge d'affaires in Tehran was summoned on Sunday," Iran's IRNA news agency said.
Right after the arrest in early May, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi firmly denied any Iranian involvement in the alleged plot targeting the Israeli embassy in London, describing media reports as suspicious. He urged the British government to cooperate in a transparent investigation and warned of the possibility of third-party false-flag operations aimed at damaging Iran–UK relations.
Earlier this month, British police arrested seven Iranian nationals in two separate operations, which the interior minister described as among the most significant investigations of their kind in recent years.
The three men have been charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, police said, adding that the foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran.
The charges come at a time of intense scrutiny of suspected Iran-backed activities in Britain.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper said Britain would take "separate action" to address the serious issues raised by the case of the three men.
"Iran must be held to account for its actions," she said in a statement. "We must also strengthen our powers to protect our national security as we will not tolerate growing state threats on our soil."
Police said in a separate statement later on Saturday that four other men arrested as part of the counter-terrorism operation had been released from custody but the investigation was still open.
"We made these arrests due to concerns about a suspected plot to target a specific premises," the statement said, adding that they continued to provide the premises with support.
"Our investigation remains active and is ongoing."
The eighth man was released without charge on Thursday.
Britain's domestic spy chief Ken McCallum said last year that officers had responded since 2022 to 20 Tehran-backed plots that potentially posed lethal threats to UK citizens and residents.
The three men charged - Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55 - were remanded in custody and will appear at a preliminary hearing at the central criminal court on June 6.
The court on Saturday heard allegations that the three men had targeted Britain-based journalists connected with Iran International, a broadcaster which is critical of the Iranian government.
Sepahvand was also charged with surveillance and intending to commit serious violence against a person in Britain, while Manesh and Noori were charged with surveillance and the intention that serious violent acts would be committed by others.
The men arrived by irregular means, the government said, including via small boats across the Channel between 2016 and 2022.
The British government has placed Iran on the highest tier of its foreign influence register, requiring Tehran to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least eight people have died and more than 90 others were injured following a catastrophic gas tanker explosion on a major highway in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district on Wednesday, authorities confirmed.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on 13 September with no tsunami threat, coming just weeks after the region endured a devastating 8.8-magnitude quake — the strongest since 1952.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
Fifteen Turkish activists, who were unlawfully detained by Israel aboard the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian aid flotilla, arrived at Istanbul Airport on Tuesday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met on Monday with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said via the country’s social media platform NSosyal.
Iran says one million undocumented Afghan refugees have returned to their country majority of them voluntarily in the last six and half months criticising the international donors for their less-than-savoury contribution to the refugee programmes.
Leaders of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) signed the Gabala Declaration at the 12th Summit of the Council of Heads of State, outlining new priorities for political, economic, and cultural cooperation across the Turkic world.
President Ilham Aliyev welcomed the heads of state and government participating in the 12th Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Organization of Turkic States, held in Gabala on October 7.
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